Tag Archives: garage

This mix is the outcome of a beautiful email (below) sent to DRUMZ from a young man called J. ZOOMBA. Hailing from Spain and recently transported to South London, he wrote to tell us that amongst other things, he believes we have similar taste in music…he wasn’t wrong.

Noteably, the tracklist features artists such as Canblaster, Jamie George, French Fries & Riffs and is riddled with earworms, that I for one, have had the pleasure of feeling at some brilliant Youngunz, Club Cheval & Night Slugs nights here in Paris where D.O.T.S is currently based.

As well as being a sonic postcard of current Friday & Saturday bass orientated dancefloors, this mix is also an exciting indication of what to expect from J Zoomba’s new audio-visual night of the same name – PIRI PIRI, set to hit South London’s Amersham Arm’s on April 2. Expect great things.

Here’s the original email from J Zoomba :

I’m 22, London born, but was brought up in Spain where I started the first international Dubstep/Bass Culture nights about 4 years ago. Back then they didn’t have a clue how to take it (like most), but we kept on pushing and now its one of the main urban nights in the country.

We’ve managed to bring all types of bass heads, from Martelo and Redlight through to The Heatwave, Congo Natty, Foreign Beggars, Baobinga……… most of them for the first time in the south of Spain (we were based in Granada).

I’ve just moved back to south London a few months ago and have been working on a fresh take on the UK bass scene with a few like minded producers, trying to incorporate the Latin influence as much as we can.

We’ve started up a crew called PIRI PIRI, and we’ll also be putting on nights in south London (the first being the 2nd April). It’s mostly aimed to break down the barriers between the different UK bass scenes, and hopefully inject a bit of the unpretentious Spanish party vibe into the dance!

We’ll also be putting on documentaries before the gigs, based around the music we’re promoting (be it Baile Funk, Dancehall, Dubstep.. we’ve been speaking to this guy about putting on screenings of his mind blowing docs: http://rosforth.com/).

The venue is the Amersham Arms, and its also has a really vibesy little gallery in the top floor that we would be looking to use.

Finally, I heard Martelo’s mix you put up a few weeks back, absolutely massive. Like I said I feel we’re on a similar musical wavelength.

The mix is 1hr of jams, mostly on a skankin’ garage/funky tip, with the odd juke bootleg thrown in, a whole heap of dubs, plus some from myself and the Piri Piri mansdem!

I let out a massive “yeah-eh-eh-eh-eh” going through the entire scale when this mix came into our inbox last week from New York’s finest, Dave Q (Dubwar / Twis’Up) & Falty DL (Planet Mu / Swamp 81). As good things come to those who wait, we held off until today, Love day, to share it with you. Below is an email interview with Dave Q & Falty DL, explaining more about it. Enjoy…x

GC- Can you tell me how you made it, why these tunes, what’s it all about?

DQ- The mix is meant to be a loveletter to UK hardcore. We wanted to usebreakbeat oriented tunes at all tempos to draw a connection back to Jungle. Falty did the first half of the mix. His tune “Hard” is the first track and pretty much sets the tone for the whole thing. He sent it to me a few months ago and it blew me away for how faithful it was to the style of pre-jungle breakbeat hardcore, but at house tempo andcompletely fresh. He gave the tune to Loefah, who signed it to Swamp81, and he’s continued to make a number of these sorta distinctly junglistic tracks that I think are really refreshing. Muscular femininity is what we’re going for. That explains the female body builder cover photo 🙂 My part of the mix (the second half) is more strictly jungle, though mostly more obscure pre-1994 tunes, where you could still have a hard 4×4 kick drum. Since most of my dj sets have been including Juke atthe end lately, I’ve started pushing the tempo further up and ending with Jungle, which has surprisingly reignited my excitement for jungle. It has been particularly fun to discover a lot of stuff that was made before I got into jungle in ’95 (still my favorite single year for music in my lifetime).

FALTY – I agree with what D said earlier, this represents a lot of history and the present of hardcore music. What’s cool is it is backwards. Present day tunes first half, old school last half.

GC- What’s up with the ‘future garage’ tag/genre ?

DQ- I don’t really have too much to say about future garage. I don’t care for the term personally. Falty probably has more to say about it though.

FALTY – Future garage… errrr… not my fav term tbh, but I don’t really care too much about genre names these days. I try and remind myself how lucky I am to be a producer and not dwell on the petty stuff : )

Here’s a + hour long recording of N-Type b2b Walsh @ D.O.T.S, Plan B back in 2007. The idea of the night was to invite DJ’s known for playing one genre to come and play stuff they don’t usually get to play out- be they sounds that influenced them or just sound they liked.

Dubstep heads Walsh & N-Type chose old skool garage and 2-step and early dubstep. It was a history lesson. They absolutely tore the floor apart.